The March (13 page)

And then it pained her terribly when she one day expressed hope for the future and John called her an idiot. It was hard to forget that, such a cruel thing it was to say. She was no idiot. She was a very capable person, a loyal wife, and a smart and insightful mother, she was good with accounts and knew how to run a household. It was her educated taste in fabrics and furnishings that created their beautiful home. He had been too strict with their sons when they were but little boys, and she had explained to him why that was wrong and he had listened. He had come to her for advice on many an occasion, and she had given good advice. And, finally, she was bearing up under these circumstances with more grace and dignity than he was. It was not she who was running around madly all over Savannah and telling the military what they were doing wrong. The boys had confided in her—he had done that to the point of embarrassing them when he followed them to their picket-duty posts and had to be shooed away by their officers.

But she didn’t begin to think that perhaps John had gone mad and that everything he’d done, selling off his good working slaves, rushing the family to Savannah to live like indigents—for even if he and the boys rode off she could have remained and not come to harm, just as she saw now in Savannah how women kept their homes whose husbands and sons were fighting for the South, and the Union army might have passed through and left them without food or stock, but she would still be mistress of Fieldstone in their own home among their own things, and making do until their return—she didn’t begin to ask herself if everything John had done, and that she had deferred to, was in fact the judgment of an unstable mind until the night of the retreat, when General Hardee’s troops fell back and made their way across the Savannah River to South Carolina. John had stood there on Broad Street as the soldiers waited in formation to cross the pontoon bridge, and he called them cowards. These poor boys—I saw them myself—looking cold and miserable standing there in the street and waiting for their turn across. It was after midnight and so windy and cold—why, some of them were barefoot and some had their feet in women’s shoes, that’s how ill equipped these soldiers were. And I looked for John Junior and little Jamie, and walked up and down the ranks trying to find them, but to no avail, while in the meantime John stood there shouting, with his hair sticking up and his face red and the veins in his neck popping out, he was ordering them all to turn back and man the trenches and act like men and not miserable damn cowards—till an officer rode up and said, Sir, I’ll thank you to remove yourself from sight or I’ll have you shot for treason.

It was such a windy night, and in fact the retreat was well managed, and spared the city the destruction it would have suffered if we had fought, as I heard people say who might have been just as fearful of losing our troops as anyone. The big fires were kept up as if the army was still in place, and all night the cannon fired toward the Union lines outside of town just to fool them into thinking they dare not attack while in fact the troops and their wagons and supplies, and my two sons, were spiriting themselves away, thank God, instead of lying dead like so many others under the boots of General Sherman.

And from that night—when was it, just a few nights ago—he, John, did not talk, he did not say a word, this man of such rage, such fist-shaking rage, he became so calm, so silent, that that was even more frightening to me, the way he stared at whoever spoke to him and didn’t reply: my husband. Can a man age so in just a few days? Or was it that he was always this old but that his vigor had suddenly deserted him that hid just how old he was? And why did he have to go to the warehouse where our things were, where our furniture and art and our rugs were stored for safekeeping? Perhaps to talk with his friend the cotton broker, Mr. Feinstein, who had been so kind as to accommodate us and who was always so patient listening to John. It was more than just a business connection, such an odd friendship for my husband to have, Mr. Feinstein being a Jewish gentleman, but maybe John had to talk to someone if not to me. I followed him. I was so frightened for his state of mind, I didn’t know what he might do. Two Union soldiers stood guard at the warehouse doors with their rifles held in front of them. And there out in the street was Mr. Feinstein with one of his workers, and he was locked out of his own building. John, he said, my business has been taken from me. I have this piece of paper with the order signed by General Sherman. He says my warehouse and all the cotton it holds is the property of the Union army. And Mr. Feinstein held his hands up to Heaven.

And of course John Jameson being who he is, he could not abide this. A more reasonable man might have gone to see the General or someone on his staff to explain the situation, just to explain that our personal things were stored in there with the cotton bales and, granted, cotton was a prized spoil of war, but of what use, for instance, would my needlepoint chairs or my English fabrics be to the Union army? Or my Persian rugs? Or my white leather-bound family Bible, with its steel-engraved illustrations and its own claw-foot oak stand? But John was now beyond reason. He argued with the soldiers to let him in—why? Was he going to carry off our things by himself? He became bellicose and threatened them, and he took up a paving stone from the pile in the street and came back to where the soldiers stood. Oh, I tried to hold him but his arm tore out of my grip, and Mr. Feinstein shouted, Wait, Jameson! One of the soldiers raised his rifle and I screamed. What was so hateful is that he said nothing in warning he did not say anything, this soldier—and I never want to hear such a sound again—when he brought the rifle butt down upon John Jameson’s head. And I watched my husband of nineteen years, who married me when I was a girl and took me to live on his plantation, drop like a tree felled, all the sense blown from him on the blood sprung from his poor head.

WHEN PEARL CAME
into the ward a woman was sitting by one of the beds, and from the back she looked like the wife ma’m. Pearl didn’t want to believe it. She moved closer, sidling, ready to run. And then over the woman’s head she saw the patient with the bandage on his head, and it was her pap.

At this moment Mattie Jameson turned and found herself looking up at the child who had haunted her life. Pearl wore the sky-blue Union trousers under her skirt and a uniform sash around her waist, and held a stack of white towels in her arms. Her hair had grown longer and she wore it pulled back and tied in a bun. Mattie had not shed a tear, sitting beside her unconscious husband. Now the tears filled her eyes.

Her life had collapsed, come to pieces, and here stood this child of her husband’s sin to announce to her such upheavals of fortune as only God in his vengeance could design.

How many times during the years did she want to touch this beautiful child, how many times she had wanted to make her life easier. But John wanted nothing to do with her and it was easy enough to comply. When Nancy Wilkins died, Mattie was relieved. She thought that would be the end of the shadow that lay daily upon her own life in the form of such an extremely beautiful slave woman as Nancy Wilkins. She thought that would be the end of the humiliation of an entire plantation of slaves knowing that her own bed was not sufficient for the Massah. But there was still Pearl. And if she, Mattie, had any instinct of kindness, or made any gesture of conciliation, it was Pearl herself who discouraged her, making it easy to dislike her by the insolence of her manner and the glances of contempt that flashed from her. And the older she grew the worse she became. It was Pearl’s own fault that she found no place for herself at Fieldstone, accepted neither in the house nor in the quarters, too sassy for one and disdainful of the other, with only old Roscoe to guide her, putting her to work in the kitchen and the laundry, or sending her out to the field when she was needed there. But Mattie, knowing herself a good Christian woman, saw herself now as something else as she remembered her last glimpse of Pearl standing with her satchel and waiting for John to tell her to get up in the carriage and come with them, and how glad Mattie was that he didn’t, thinking good riddance, and that maybe there was something to be said for this war after all. And all these thoughts overwhelmed Mattie now as the tears burst from her and she sat bowed and sobbing beside her comatose husband.

Pearl, disdainful of the woman’s tears, turned her attention to her pap. How peaceful and handsome he looked with his eyes closed, as if thinking worthy thoughts in the calmness of his being. But this ain’t like you, she said, hardly aware that she was speaking. I never remember you layin abed, Pap. Always up and about ridin down the field hands, shoutin an stompin ever’where, I could hear your footsteps all through the house. Won’t you open your eyes, Pap? This is Pearl, your own born chile here. Never christened ’cept by my mama. She name me Pearl for my white skin. Your skin, Massah Jameson my pap. Your fine white skin. What happened that you layin here? I never seen you so quiet. I wish you was to wake up so I could tell you I am free. And by the laws of the Bible that you can’t do nothin about I carry your name. This is Pearl Wilkins Jameson speakin in your ear, Pap. Your Pearl, as I hope you will rise up and live long to remember. Come, Pap, open your eyes and look on the daughter of your flesh and blood. Your eyes is closed, but I know you listenin. I know you hear me. And if you worryin about me I can promise no man will ever treat me like you did my mama, nosir. So you needn’t worry ’bout your Pearl. She here in Savannah now an thas just to begin. She goin far, your Pearl. She will take your name to glory. Scrub it up of the shame and shit you put upon it. Make it nice and clean again for peoples to remember.

XV

I
N THE FIRST TRIUMPHANT DAYS OF THE OCCUPATION,
Sherman had sent a telegram to the President: I beg to present to you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition. Also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton.

He held in his hands Lincoln’s letter of humble thanks. An adoring note from Grant. A copy of the congressional resolution in his honor. Editorials fulsome in their acclaim.

The country had gone wild. The General whom nobody had heard from in months had buried an ax in the Southern heart.

Sherman’s billet was the mansion of a cotton broker. Its many rooms were hushed by thick rugs and heavy draperies. There were potted palms and busts of Roman senators on pedestals. The walls were hung with paintings of pink-nippled harem women lolling under the eyes of Negro eunuchs. He slept little. In his apartments upstairs he sat in his bath and smoked his cigar and read of his greatness. Letters of adulation were coming in by the bundle. He called for Moses Brown to add to the hot water, for that was the only thing that could calm him now, national recognition working in him as a nervous excitement. Also, the steam eased his breathing—his asthma was acting up. Not only the rain but the sea wind was having its effect. Sherman came from Ohio. Even to be near the sea unsettled him, and whenever he had to be on it all he could think of was the perversity of God in composing something that only heaved and wallowed and slopped about.

He wrote to his wife: I will not trust this acclaim to last. Are these not the newspapers that, after Shiloh, announced to the world that I was crazy? It is the verso of the same coin. Yet, day and night, crowds of blacks stood outside the house waiting for a glimpse of him. By eight every morning petitioners were lined up in the parlor. Periodically he went downstairs to receive them. Among his visitors were the wives of Confederate generals. They brought letters from their husbands asking that they be given safe passage. He readily complied. He affected gallantry. He wanted the people of Savannah to know that he was, despite all reports, human. The women were the hardest to convince. The older they were, the more likely they were to let him know what they thought of him. In a way, he found this salutary. A Mrs. Letitia Pettibone appeared whom he vaguely remembered from his days as a young officer stationed in Atlanta. What she said he couldn’t later recall, for she carried a beaded purse looped to her wrist, and when she swung it at him, had he not with his quick reflexes stepped back he was a certain casualty of war. After the woman was escorted from the room, he took a puff of his cigar and said to his adjutant, A new Field Order, Morrison: Ladies will please check their handbags at the door.

Christmas morning the rain poured from a black sky. Sherman had called for a review of the troops. His remarks for the occasion were written out for company commanders to read to their men. While they stood on parade the troops heard that they would be remembered in the military history of the world. Sherman, on a reviewing platform, listened to his words coming dis-synchronously from all directions and as if through water. The tarpaulin roof over his head billowed and snapped in the wind. Two regimental bands combined played a march. It sounded as if every note was played twice.

Sherman considered again the measures he had taken: The Ogeechee and the Sound cleared of mines, secesh coastal guns dismounted. Slocum’s corps deployed from the Savannah River to the seven-mile post on the canal, Howard’s to the sea, Kilpatrick’s cavalry by the King’s Bridge and the roads leading north and west. Shops open, streets cleared, fire companies intact. All public buildings, abandoned plantations, etc., the property of the Federal government.

He’d missed nothing. Then what was wrong? The national praise heaped on him in the past several days seemed as cold and wet as the rain on his face. Is that all it is, this damn weather in my lungs? He left the platform and was ridden to his rooms.

Sitting facing a warm hearth, his feet in their damp socks held before the fire, Sherman began to work it out: None of this of Savannah was war. It was governance. Warring in the field was pure, clear of purpose, it had a form. But governance was conferring with civil authorities, it was dealing with Northern recruiting agents who wanted to conscript blacks as army substitutes. It was dodging ladies’ handbags. The local population was swollen with whites who’d fled here along with the freed slaves who had trailed after the columns. He was feeding them all, white and black. The port was thick with packets and steamers and cutters. The city was rife with unattached and bereft women of childbearing age. His soldiers were gambling, and those who were not in the whorehouses were filling the churches. He’d ordered drills and installed curfews, but none of it could staunch the drip by drip depletion of their war blood. It was as if his fighting force had melted and spread over Savannah like some viscid pool of humanity. Somewhere in all this there must still be an army, Sherman said to himself. Where are they when I need them? Until I get out of here I’m a sitting duck for Washington.